Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix. – Christina Baldwin
The moon hung as a white sliver above the Maple Inn as seasonal winds passed lazily through the mountain air, carrying multi-colored leaves through the arbor and scattering them indiscriminately along the forest floor.
"You're back!" Nana chimed as she rushed to meet Kouta and Lucy at the side entrance of the inn. The two nodded with faint smiles, sighing in relief when they saw that Nana had failed to realize that they had entered holding hands. "You must be hungry, Kouta-san", the fuscia-haired girl remarked candidly. "We have some onigiri and leftover sukiyaki that I can heat up for you." Kouta considered the offer as he shrugged off his shoes and hung his jacket by the door. "Sounds tempting but you'll understand if I say that I don't have much of an appetite right now," he said in an apologetic tone.
Both Nana and Lucy looked at him with chiding eyes but decided not to push him at the moment but before he crossed through the threshold into the halls, he felt a hand grip his wrist softly. Kouta turned to see Lucy with a concerned expression playing across her features. "You should get some sleep," she whispered after letting her hand linger on his arm a little longer. He shook his head in agreement and walked with the two diclonii silently until they reached the junction between the kitchen and the halls that led into the bedrooms.
"Hold on for a second," Lucy murmured, turning to look at Nana. "I'll be back, don't go anywhere."
"Uh…alright," Nana grumbled. "Oh wait. Yuka-chan called a little while ago and said that she and Mayu-chan will be back soon so don't spend so much time doing whatever you're going to do with Kouta-san before bed," she giggled much to Lucy's ire who just glared at her with pink cheeks. "Idiot, I'm just going to see how bad he's hurt," she growled in defense before grabbing Kouta, who was wearing the wearing the same expression that he always wore when being caught in the middle of two women, and dragged him off to the bathroom.
"I'm alright, really," Kouta stammered as Lucy closed the door and looked at him with commanding eyes. "Take off your shirt," she ordered. Kouta's eyes widened and he scrambled back a few steps as Lucy observed him with mirth. "Everyone's having dirty thoughts tonight," Lucy sighed. She approached Kouta slowly and put her face in front of his chest while he was just beginning to notice the change in her physical appearance.
"Hey what happened to your hor…eh…what are you doing," he asked quizzically as Lucy began sniffing the air around his shirt. "I'll tell you about it in the morning. Now take off your shirt, you're bleeding," she pleaded, using her best puppy-dog eyes to postpone the hail of questions until the next day. "Yeah, alright," Kouta uttered softly, slowly complying and tossing his shirt over the shower railing and looking down in surprise as small patches of red dotted the bandages around his chest.
"Thought so," Lucy stated. "You probably opened your wounds up walking all over the mountain…you should've gone to a hospital." She whispered the last part as she rose up and looked up to meet his gaze with her vermillion eyes shimmering sympathetically. Kouta blushed slightly at their closeness and found reprieve by averting his vision over to the sink for a short while until two soft fingers pulled him back to Lucy.
"I'm glad you're okay," she breathed. The two of them stood together, looking into each other's eyes, listening to the stillness of the inn until Lucy slipped her arms around Kouta's waist, pulling him into a light embrace which he hesitantly returned at first but soon found himself holding her tight. "That's my line," he muttered into her hair. They stayed together for several more moments until the fact of their limited time crossed their minds.
Lucy sighed as her ears picked up the sound of several people ascending the staircase outside and broke away from Kouta reluctantly, skipping the awkward moment that was bound to happen if she looked up at him and opting instead to remove his bandages. After disposing of them properly and checking his chest and back, she deduced that the injuries weren't immediately threatening in the least bit but the possibility of infection was still a very real possibility.
Grabbing a cloth from a series of wooden shelves hanging from the wall, Lucy wiped away the blood from the remnants of the bullet wounds. "Think I'll live?" Kouta asked blankly, grimacing at the small amount of pressure over the damaged flesh. "Yeah, just sit still and let me patch you up," Lucy mumbled, tossing the cloth into a wicker hamper by the door. "And don't worry," she interjected as Kouta motioned to turn around and face her. "I'm not going to melt all over you this time so relax." And with that, she placed her hands on Kouta's shoulders and got to work manipulating his body's internal structure to heal itself almost instantaneously.
"So how'd you know I was bleeding in the first place," Kouta inquired in a tone of awe as he ran his fingers over the scarless skin where his wounds had been. "Long story, wait until the morning," Lucy quipped hurriedly, wincing at the sound of the front door of the inn closing shut. "They just got back anyway, why don't you go-"
"WHAT?!"
The sound of Yuka screaming caused Lucy to rub her ears in frustration as she opened the door and pushed Kouta out into the hallway. "Looks like someone found out I was still alive," she groaned, earning an amused look from Kouta. "May as well go meet them"
Lucy began walking down back towards the Kitchen, dreading the oncoming interrogation that was sure to follow after the happy reunion. "Hey," Kouta called after her, jogging lightly to catch up. "We were all so sad, you know. Don't think for a second that they're going to be anything short of happy to see you," he stated seriously, eliciting a small smile from Lucy.
"Yeah, I know," she muttered guiltily.
They are my friends after all…
Setting of towards the source of the commotion, Lucy and Kouta strode casually into the kitchen where the former was nearly knocked off her feet by two sets of arms wrapping around her. She couldn't help but smile as Yuka and Mayu buried their tear-stained faces into her shoulders. "Alright, alright," she laughed, disentangling herself from the two girls. "You just saw me this morning, give me a break."
Several tissues later, the group was sitting down at the table listening intently to Nana after Lucy had refused the majority of their initial questions. But Nana was only able to say so much until focus returned to Lucy who once again told everyone to hold off until morning and go to bed.
"Fine but first thing tomorrow," Yuka ordered in a tone that left no room for argument. "Sure thing," Lucy said reassuringly. "Promise?" Mayu asked.
"Promise."
After a few more minutes of hugs and smiles, everyone save Lucy and Nana retired to their rooms.
"Well that wasn't too terribly painful," Lucy sighed, sinking into a nearby chair and rubbing her forehead with fingers until she felt a small jolt of pain. "Damn," she seethed, looking down at her hands and the small bit of red that stained one of her newly-elongated nails. "Still not used to this body yet."
"Is that why you wanted me to keep papa here?" Nana inquired, looking with mild interest across Lucy's new features. "Pretty much," she answered as the cut on her head began to heal. "I just have a feeling that he'll know what happened back on that lighthouse."
Nana nodded slowly, and pointed over to a door leading out of the kitchen. "He's out past the garden, follow me." The two diclonii set off to the edge of the compound, exiting out back into the cool night air. "Smells like rain," Lucy commented dryly as the pair moved alongside a rock garden to the outermost area of the Maple Inn's property where they spotted a shadow hunched over several burial mounds dug along the edge of the forested region.
Kurama knelt before several sticks of incense, hands together, and lost in thought.
"I never took you for a ritualistic type," Lucy remarked in a low tone, keeping her eyes on the man in front of her as he rose and turned to face her. "In my line of work, you need some form of faith," he sighed, moving along the line of graves and studying them intently. "Nana would you go back inside please," Kurama asked his surrogate daughter. "But Nana wants to stay with papa," she pleaded, only to get waved off. "Papa has to talk with Lucy-san for a while; I'll be back inside shortly."
Nana pouted for a moment and turned to go back to the inn with her shoulders held low. The two watched her go before slowly facing each other with equal expressions. "Just let me ask you this before you start: what will you do to me after you get all the answers I have to give?"
Lucy looked at him humorously, brushing imaginary dirt from her sweater. "You think I'm going to kill you"
"You haven't given me a reason to think otherwise."
Lucy heaved a sigh and looked up at the clouds for a moment before returning her gaze back to the stern-faced Kurama. "I've given up killing," she admitted happily, laughing at the look of shock she received. "The voice in my DNA finally shut up today so I can say that truthfully. Also…at this point I'm looking for ways to atone for the past, erase the memories and start over."
"I…see," Kurama muttered, sitting down on a nearby grave mound. "I don't think that's very respectful," Lucy chided. "Well this is just a pile of dirt now seeing that this was your grave up until this afternoon," Kurama retorted, leaning back after plucking out the burnt incense from the mound. "Well we're short on time," he began. "Go ahead; I'll answer what I can."
Lucy narrowed her eyes at him at sat down at the grave marked "Nyuu" next to him, placing her face on her hands and her elbows on her knees. "First thing I want to know is the state of the vector virus," she asked quickly.
Kurama pushed his glasses further up his nose and recalled everything that had recently happened. "Well as you may or may not know, the late director Kakuzawa has administered the virus across a large portion of the planet. The craft used to dispense the virus was designed to break once it reached maximum altitude, scattering several smaller crafts aimed at many of the world's most populated areas. The virus itself will infect the majority of those that come into contact with it as well as unborn children less than six months into development. You can expect to see astounding numbers of horned children in the news within the next year."
"Unbelievable," Lucy whispered. "Are there any countermeasures being taken?" Kurama nodded and edged forward slightly.
"A vaccine is in the late stages of development as we speak. It won't be ready in time to stop many of the births but the WHO is in the process of enforcing strict chastity regulations though I doubt their success. We're in a lot of trouble and many people will die so if you're serious about whatever kind of redemption you're after then there will be many opportunities where the human race can use your help in the very near future."
Lucy looked at Kurama pensively before flopping onto the ground behind her, staring blankly up at the sky.
This is a little much for one day.
"What kind of things do you expect I'll be doing?" she asked without bothering to fix her posture.
"…We'll need you to fight."
Lucy shot up, tossing her crimson hair over her shoulders wildly. "N…no, I can't do that. I made a promise." Kurama's eye twitched in vexation as he began rubbing his temple slowly with his thumbs. "Don't be an idiot," he shouted. "You think that anyone will blame you for killing a few monsters to save millions, even billions of lives? Do you honestly believe that some pact you made is more important than what is going to happen next year? That virus was specifically engineered to destroy humanity, the silpelit that will be born are generations apart from you. Of course your powers are far greater but their growth is accelerated to foster them into a combat-ready age within six weeks."
Kurama sighed and removed his glasses, looking Lucy straight in the eyes. "Help us," he urged. "Prevent deaths and tragedies; undo what you've done in the past. If you're chasing redemption then this is the best chance you will ever have to catch it. What else were you planning on doing? Join the construction crews in the city and rebuild the sky-scrapers you destroyed?" Lucy was taken aback by his sincerity, replacing her widened eyes with a thoughtful expression.
She groaned audibly and flung herself back once more to stare up at the sky. "Just…give me a couple days to think about it, alright?" she pleaded, causing Kurama to sink back into a loose posture and clean his glasses before pushing them back on. "Have it your way," he grunted in annoyance.
"You said something about my powers…" Lucy started, trailing off in hopes that Kurama would fill in the many blanks surrounding her mysterious resurrection. Succeeding in capturing his attention, Lucy moved up a little while he gathered his thoughts. "It was something the Kakuzawas and I had started scraping the surface of in the months before you escaped and postponed our research," Kurama stated, fiddling inside his shirt pocket and pulling out a cigarette. After giving himself a light and taking a few puffs much to the suspense of Lucy, he got back to where he had left off.
"Using your DNA, we traced your ancestry back hundreds of years using a sort of de-evolving genetic web. A pure diclonius such as yourself, unlike a silpelit is a species completely separate to that of the human race as you may have concluded in your childhood. But this is all unrelated; during these experiments, we discovered an anomaly in the more primal region of your brain. It was an unidentified cell cluster that contained DNA with a code completely different from any other animal on the planet. We took a sample of these cells and began testing their capabilities in every circumstance that we could fathom and were absolutely amazed by the results."
Kurama paused to take a long drag on his cigarette, blowing the smoke out slowly. "Still following?" Lucy nodded.
"These cells when forced into contact with other cells re-wrote their genetic code and multiplied at an alarming rate while taking the form of the cells they had touched. These new cells were improved and suffered none of the weaknesses that had been exhibited by the previous ones. For example, we introduced the cells to a broken piece of human bone we had harvested from a fresh corpse. The bone not only repaired itself within seconds but it became as hard as a diamond. We moved up from there, creating hyper-dense muscle tissue that would allow a five-year old to lift a bus."
"This is what I believe happened to you up on that lighthouse. You were so thoroughly destroyed that that cell cluster activated, disposing of the rest of your weak body and rebuilding you nearly from the ground up so that nothing of the sort would ever happen again. It gave you everything you would need, strength, speed, agility, stronger and more vectors, even claws and fangs…"
Lucy interrupted him by opening her mouth and poking at her canines, surprised when the distance between the two was shorter than what she had expected. After a great deal of poking around her teeth, Kurama cleared his throat and resumed talking.
"Long story short, I think you've rapidly evolved from a strain of DNA that had been dormant inside of you since birth and I imagine your body will still be undergoing modifications for the next day or so. The only thing I can't explain is why the instinctual voice that you once had is now silent." Kurama shrugged with his cigarette hanging loosely from his fingers as Lucy eyed it with an agitated look. "Would you mind, that's burning my nose," she growled, pinching the aforementioned appendage.
After one last drag, Kurama hesitantly complied and looked down at his watch, staring at it for a few seconds before tapping the lens in annoyance. "Damn antique," he mumbled in a guttural tone. He motioned to speak again before something odd caught his eye. Whichever way he moved the watch, both hands slid along the face, pointing in the same direction which just happened to be exactly where Lucy was sitting. "I don't suppose Nana fed you a magnet," he said absent-mindedly, bringing the watch closer to the diclonius and verifying the strange phenomenon.
"Who knows, are these new teeth of mine strong enough to chew through metal?" she retorted with a small laugh as she laid down sideways once more. Kurama jolted to her side as the hands of the watch moved once more, this time identifying the source of the attraction. "It's coming from your head," he remarked with obvious confusion. "Wait you don't think…"
"Think what and what's coming from my head?" Lucy asked sharply. "There's a magnetic field coming from your head…" Kurama began with a look of shock on his face. "Of course, that would explain it," he exclaimed earnestly.
"Explain what?" Lucy shouted.
"I think that bullet is still in your brain and with the flow of electric current, it became an electromagnet which in turn has miraculously disabled your third personality!" Kurama cried as Lucy shot up with a mixed look of surprise and horror playing across her face. "Are you fucking with me?" she yelled, grabbing onto his shirt. All Kurama could do is slowly nod as Lucy's mind was running wild.
"Don't worry, with your new immune system there's no risk for infection or any other health complications," Kurama explained hastily, calming Lucy down if only the slightest bit.
There's still a fucking bullet in my head though.
"Unbelievable," Lucy murmured, wrapping her arms around her knees. "Do you think that the voice will come back if I take it out?"
"Absolutely," Kurama answered immediately. "And most likely more influential than before," he concluded gravely.
Lucy sighed and buried her face in her hands.
"Unfortunately for you I can't spare very much sympathy at the moment," Kurama declared, finally finding the time on a cell phone he had fished out of his pants pocket. "I heard a few helicopters around her this afternoon. They were most likely looking for you since judging by the lack of trouble around here, no one saw you move from the lighthouse," he deduced slowly, assured by Lucy's nodding. "Right now they most likely don't know if you simply disintegrated or got carted off somewhere but I doubt they've considered the possibility that you're alive and in the condition that you are which is fortunate."
Kurama slouched over the empty grave, now seat and shook his head. "It wouldn't surprise me if there still exists a group of scientists and madmen out there who want to use your species," he sighed. "Remnants of the vector research facility will most likely organize once more along with the few lucky SAT operatives that survived the all the events up until now, joining with some maniacal third party…or not. It's just as likely that they will disband with your disappearance but I personally doubt that. The recent events are tempting to others like Kakuzawa to convince them to follow in his footsteps and twist the knife that he has already thrust deep into this world. The time between now and the time when the vaccine to the vector virus can be administered worldwide will be one of uncertainty and great distress."
Both Lucy and Kurama felt the weight of those words as small raindrops began falling gently atop their heads. "Here," Kurama offered, holding out a cell phone to Lucy. "It has my number in it and you can call me on a secure line when you decide what you want to do next year."
"You're not staying here?" Lucy asked in slight surprise, getting to her feet alongside Kurama. "No, I think both of us attract too much attention to be shared under one household," he replied heavily, sparing a regretful glance at the Maple Inn as the rain began increasing in intensity. "I have a place in the city, the address in the phone. Please give Nana my number but don't tell her where I am. In the state of things right now, she shouldn't go into the city which goes for you as well. I'll update you when I get information on the status of the people that may want to capture you but in the meantime try to remain inconspicuous and let your friends answer the door for a while if you know what I mean."
Lucy nodded her head in understanding as Kurama disappeared into the rain.